Rose Festival

We have something in Portland called the Rose Festival. It is a lot of fun, there is a “fun center” - rides, and food and vendors, etc. There are THREE parades. The meat of it lasts 11 days. Yesterday was the official kick off. The first thing that happens, is a queen is crowned. All the possibles are senior girls from the local high schools. The high schools all have a court and the student body chooses a queen from their school who goes on to the Portland court. Traditionally, as Portland is pretty much a white town, the girls have all been white. Last night was the crowning. There were 14 girls. 4 were white, 3 were black, 3 were some kind of Hispanic, and 4 were some kind of Asian (no disrespect intended, I don't know the differences, I know one was from Thailand, and one was from China). This has been probably the most diverse court in the history of the Rose Festival, I was sooo proud. Why, then, was I surprised when I white, Irish girl from a Catholic School was voted queen? This is still Portland, after all. I am still bummed. I did a bit of research. The coronation has been every year since 1907. By looking at pictures of the queens since then, I have some statistics for you (2002-2003 were missing). There have been no queens who looked Hispanic, two queens who looked Asian, and 4 queens who looked black. HELLO! Out of almost 100 girls! WTF?!?! I understand the ones early on. There was probably a law or something. The first non-white queen was in 1970 (Asian). That is thirty-five years ago. And out of those 35 girls (not counting the two missing ones), only 6 were non-white! We have a long way to go!!!

Knitting news - yesterday I finished off the heel of my son's sock. I did a row or two of stockinette, and had him try them on. I don't know what happened (I had a feeling), but I had cast on only 44 instead of 52 stitches for the leg. It wouldn't go over his foot. I had to pull the whole thing out, and start again. :(!!!